But Where Was Dostoevski When His Kids Needed Some Quality Time?

Let`s face it. There are times when a guy just needs a little reassurance.

``Who do you think`s a better writer,`` I asked my wife recently, ``me or Dostoevski?``

``Where do you come up with these questions?`` she evaded.

``What`s wrong with a person wanting to know if he has his wife`s respect? I`ll bet you anything Dostoevski had his wife`s respect.``

``Are you kidding? He probably drove her crazy, too. I read somewhere he was a manic-depressive and an out-of-control gambler.``

``Don`t try to impress me. Just give me a straight answer.``

``Look, I don`t want to hurt your feelings,`` she sighed, ``but, if you must know, he was a better novelist.``

``What do you mean? Why?``

``He wrote as brilliantly as anyone ever has about good and evil, the eternal human dilemmas.``

My novel-there had been only one-was about baseball.

``So, there we have it,`` I said bitterly.

``C`mon, will you?`` she paused. ``Who do you think is a better writer?

Oh, but I guess that`s an unfair question-you never read Dostoevski.``

A damnable lie. In 10th grade I read ``Crime and Punishment`` almost to the end, with hardly even looking at the Monarch Notes.

Still, all right, she had a point. I had been a little irrational lately on the subject of my career. Then, again, who wouldn`t be? Here I find myself, constantly torn between work and family, always somehow feeling I`m shortchanging both.

I realize, of course, that this is a problem that is supposed to afflict women, not men. What to say? We apologize, those of us who feel the same way. Only, please, don`t make us wear a scarlet ``W``-for wimp-on our business suits.

My current crisis of confidence had been brought on by the discovery that a writer I know slightly, a guy who spends maybe six minutes a week with his kids, had just sold a book to the movies for more dough than I will earn in all the years through 2005, which is when my youngest child has an appointment to turn 21.

``Never mind,`` commiserated a writer friend, who should be getting his life back around 2008. ``It was a rotten book. He writes rotten books `cause he has rotten values.``

``That`s right,`` I agreed glumly. ``Our priorities are straight and his are crooked.``

``We`re generous-spirited and he`s selfish.``

``He`s bad and we`re good.``

That decided, we spent the next quarter hour trying to come up with a best seller that wouldn`t require any work. We settled on: WOMEN WHO LOVE MEN WHO LOVE CATS, subtitled HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN THIRTY SECONDS A DAY WHILE MAKING YOUR FIRST MILLION WITH NO MONEY DOWN!

``Can`t you work in a diet somewhere?`` asked my wife, the critic.

I threw up my hands. ``A diet! It`s becoming too big a project. We`ll never find time to write it.``

``Write what?`` inquired my daughter, entering the room.

She was genuinely curious, as she is about almost everything.

So for the next half-hour I told her, with a lot of kidding around mixed in, all about the quirky professional world I inhabit. And by the time we were through, I`d once again forgotten all about bitterness and frustration.

As she was leaving, something occurred to me and I put it to her directly.

Turning, she gazed up at me with wide, wondering eyes. ``Why, you are, Papa. I never even heard of Dostoevski.``